[efoods]One in five doctors admit to keeping the terminally-ill heavily sedated until they die, in what critics have dubbed ‘slow euthanasia’.

A poll of nearly 3,000 doctors found that 18.7 per cent had administered drugs to keep patients suffering from painful conditions such as cancer unconscious for hours at a time.

Subjected to ‘continuous deep sedation’, many slip into a drug-induced coma before dying – perhaps days earlier than they would have done. It is often given without the patient or the family being fully appraised of the consequences.